An Indigenous People's History of North America - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

A brilliant overview of United States colonial history with all the parts that are normally left out.  Like the fact that the first settlers survived because they stole the food of Native villages, and forced them to hunt and grow food to supply the white settlement.  It all starts right at the beginning of the history.  The whole american dream built on theft and exploitation right from the start.
For me, her main accomplishment is how she places the whole process in the context of colonialism and colonialist structures as carried out by Europe in Africa and the Far East, and also the U.S. in more recent history in relation to South and Central America as well as smaller Pacific Islands.  (Reading Varoufakis at the same time - I wonder if the whole post Bretton-Woods economic structure could be interpreted as a form of global colonialism?)
The usual american narrative avoids this colonial perspective by refusing to see the Native groups as nations with distinct and valid political structures and culture.  Yet at the same time, the U.S. treaty history refers to Native groups as nations or political powers.
The book also raises the issue of how this extremely exploitative colonialism enriched the U.S. so lavishly that it created the base of wealth for them to be able to project their power and economic colonialism globally in the following decades and century.

At the beginning there is also a reference to colonial exploitation as a result of the nature of capitalism itself.  I would like to read more about this idea to grasp it more fully.  You can see a similar structure at work in England during the late 17th century is the early stages of capitalism - the Enclosures period, when small farmers and landholders were chased off their traditional land and traditional commons land was seized by the moneyed aristocracy to practice an early form of industrial farming.  It is interesting to contrast this view of capitalism with the facts presented at the beginning of the recent book, Utopia for Realists, which highlights the rapid improvement in living conditions in the modern era due to the efficiency of capitalism as a system.  Is it a questions of some advancing so far so fast at the expense of exploited others?  How do you rebalance all this?  If it is possible?

The book is a long litany of lies, broken promises, cruelty and absolute disregard for human life.

When you place this murderous colonial exploitation alongside the institution of slavery, you are left wondering how Americans can possibly see their country as the greatest nation on earth, and a beacon of civilization, progress and freedom.  Tells you how deeply white privilege and superiority run in their culture...